Guest post by Matti Vooro
I fully support the findings of Jan –Erik Solheim , Kjell Stordahl and Ole Humlum and their very recent paper called The long sunspot cycle 23 predicts a significant temperature decrease in cycle 24 dated February 2012. The abstract reads:
Relations between the length of a sunspot cycle and the average temperature in the same and the next cycle are calculated for a number of meteorological stations in Norway and in the North Atlantic region. No significant trend is found between the length of a cycle and the average temperature in the same cycle, but a significant negative trend is found between the length of a cycle and the temperature in the next cycle. This provides a tool to predict an average temperature decrease of at least 1.0 ◦C from solar cycle 23 to 24 for the stations and areas analyzed. We find for the Norwegian local stations investigated that 25–56% of the temperature increase the last 150 years may be attributed to the Sun. For 3 North Atlantic stations we get 63–72% solar contribution. This points to the Atlantic currents as reinforcing a solar signal.
Before finding the above paper on WUWT, I had recently done a similar and slightly different analysis.
I took the Annual sunspot numbers for each year since 1900 and noted the solar maximums and solar minimums. I also noted all the years around the solar maximums that had sunspot numbers over say 60-70. These solar active periods around the solar maximums can last as many as 3-5 years . Then I lagged the data by 9 years. Then I looked at the global temperature anomalies Hadcrut3gl for the all the actual years and noted the associated and lagged sunspot numbers. I then added and noted the El Nino active years using the ONI index.
I discovered that global temperatures were rising during the years around the lagged solar active period around the solar maximum and they were down during the period around the lagged solar minimum. Also there were El Ninos at the beginning or during the lagged active sun or solar active or maximum period. In another words the sun really affects the atmosphere not in the same cycle but during the next cycle or about 9 years later . It would appear that the extra solar radiation around solar maximums, heats the surface waters of the major oceans especially the Pacific and Atlantic. The warm water is then transported by the ocean conveyor belt deeper into the ocean waters and down swelled and conveyed around the globe. It reappears as warm upwelling along the South American west coast [and other upwelling locations] and ultimately contributes to the warming of the EL Nino area Pacific waters and modifies the PDO spatial patterns or warming to put more warmer water along the west coast of North America .
Similar event happens in the Atlantic as indicated by the AMO. The longer solar cycles means fewer solar active periods or maximums and less heating 9 years later. A series of short solar cycles in a row will cause more frequent heating and the PDO and AMO will both turn positive or warm simultaneously causing what we now refer to as global warming. The extended global cooling happens when there are series of longer solar cycles with lower maximums. Co2 seems to have little or negligible effect on these large natural cycles. Natural cycles will always dwarf any minor warming from manmade greenhouse gases.
Thus our long term climate is all in the cycles of sun lagged about 9 [ 9-11]years later in its effect and interacting with the oceans which then in turn affect our atmosphere 9-11 year later.
Since we are now in the equivalent lagged year[2012-9=2003] and will next experience the solar effects of the decline of solar cycle #23 [the solar period of 2000 to 2008 ], we can expect cooler weather for at least 6 years plus another nine years after the next warming effect of the solar active period of cycle #24 [ maximum around 2013 to 2014.] So I see no significant warming for 20 years at least [2030 earliest]. This is what ocean cycles like PDO predict and what the 60 year climate cycle predicts but now we may possibly have one of many hypothesis of how the sun does all this.
The El Nino around 2009-2010 was the effect of the last solar maximum of cycle #23 [around 200-2001].
This brief article was meant to continue the debate about the exact mechanism of how our sun affects our global climate It does not answer all the questions and may pose others.
Related articles
- Solar Cycle 24 Length and Its Consequences (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Ap Index, Neutrons and Climate (wattsupwiththat.com)
- First Estimate of Solar Cycle 25 Amplitude – may be the smallest in over 300 years (wattsupwiththat.com)
- The quiet sun is getting a lot of attention. What are its effect on us? (fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com)
- New paper suggests sun may be headed for a Maunder minimum (wattsupwiththat.com)
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Philip Bradley,
Sir, the tropics are a constant self regulating heat imput to the Earths climate unaffected by the variations in the suns out put, that is why you see no signal.
It is the temperate zones that are most affected by the varying sun as the cloud cover waxes and wanes. This gives us an increase or decrease in total heat, the weather is a bun fight to try to contain the increase or decrease in total heat in a never ending battle.
In a rather belated manner tho’ no less important, is the poles, they suck heat from the oceans in huge quantities, the lag times of all these processes make it hard to quantify what is causing what and where.
Now that some real science is coming out into the light of day, the where what and how and when is slowly being correlated, and the time lapse in our sluggish heat pump Earth is slowly being understood.
That the patterns of the past can be interpreted and projected into the future, I am not positive, but if the patterns of the past are repeated in the past, they will have predictive qualities that are close to the truth.
I write about solar science in my book:
As U.S. and Russian space-program physicists took part in a tacit competition to anticipate what the Sun would do in the coming decades, the Space Race of the 1950s and ’60s was arguably being played out anew. Unlike the first time, the competition was being held out of public view, with the countries’ best physicists, Hathaway, Hansen, and Abdussamatov among them, trading blows in academic journals. This time around, the terms of the debate were not rocket-booster fuel formulae, re-entry material construction, and orbital equations, but, rather, where the planet was headed climatologically.
Jack Eddy, at the end of his life, was paying attention to the Sun’s doings. “We’re at a prolonged minimum now, of which there have been precedents,” he said in 2008, months before his passing. “Whether we’re going to go into one of these profound minima or not, we won’t know until we get there. It might make me famous if it happens, but I don’t see that we know that it will happen.” Eddy’s work has been cited by Abdussamatov, and indeed calls have been issued for the naming of the forthcoming minimum, should it be as prolonged as some anticipate, as the Eddy Minimum. It is a matter of some irony that a Russian scientist following his research to its logical conclusion appears to have greater intellectual freedom than most of his American counterparts, with the notable exception of Jack Eddy.
More here: http://amzn.to/yLN0Zm
Wow do we sense the beginnings of change in Mr Connolley ??? hahaha LOL
Bloke down the pub says:
February 13, 2012 at 3:12 am
Whether this theory is right or not, no-one can say.
That there is a weak correlation between the oscillating frequency shift of the sun spot frequency and the reconstructed global temeperatures is a fact, not a theory.
If one claims that no-one can say, he or she must know it, but that’s impossible because he or she cannot know all saying persons and their sayings in this world.
One thing that is for certain, time will tell
No one ever has given a proof for time. Time is a social convention, and has no reality in physics. Time cannot tell.
What is possible that a person argue on scientific recognitions on a heliocentric climate world view instead of a geocentric climate world view.
V.
“So, what is it about increased solar activity that just warms the north pole/arctic? Because that’s all it appears to be. The southern hemisphere has done almsot no warming, and Antarctica has done nothing but cool.”
Antarctica stays pretty much the same whatever the sun does but when the sun is active the West Antarctic Peninsula gets warmer whilst the interior gets colder. I would anticipate that when the sun is less active the Penisula gets colder but the interior gets less cold.
As regards the Arctic it is warmed by oceanic energy content flowing right into the Arctic Circle to give much more pronounced responses to solar variability than anything seen in Antarctica.
The Northern Hemisphere temperature response to solar variability is also enhanced by the large landmasses.
I agree with this from wayne Job:
“It is the temperate zones that are most affected by the varying sun as the cloud cover waxes and wanes. This gives us an increase or decrease in total heat, the weather is a bun fight to try to contain the increase or decrease in total heat in a never ending battle.”
Latitudinally shifting climate zones and similarly shifting cloud bands is the key, in my opinion.
In 2008, I wrote that atmospheric CO2 lagged atmospheric temperature T by ~9 months on a short-time-cycle (~3- 4 years – between major El Nino’s?).
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
I also noted that CO2 lags temperature by ~600-800 years from ice core data, on a much longer time cycle..
I postulated that there could be one or more intermediate (between 9 months and 800 years) cycles where CO2 lags temperature.
The late Ernst Beck had already discussed intermediate lags, and thought the CO2-after-T lag was 5 years.
This post, by inference, suggests we should be looking for a CO2-after-T lag of about 9 years, similar to the period of one sunspot cycle. We have adequate CO2 data at Mauna Loa back to ~1958, so perhaps someone has the time to look for this postulated lag.
Perhaps other longer intermediate CO2-after-T lags also exist – if we have any quality CO2 data to permit analysis (pre-1958, we would probably have to use Beck’s data compilation, which has been treated with inadequate respect, imo).
Regards, Allan
______________________________________
Here is some of the discussion from 2008:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/17/the-co2-temperature-link/
One more reference on this subject is by climate statistician William Briggs, at
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/2008/04/21/co2-and-temperature-which-predicts-which/
Thank you for your excellent summary Richard (Richard S Courtney (00:08:00)).
Richard concludes:
“there is no conclusive evidence that any of the 20th century increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is or is not due to the burning of fossil fuels.”
Thank you for your comments Michael (Michael Smith (00:50:58).
Michael asks:
“Does the temperature cycle length have an influence on CO2 lag?”
Very good question – I think the answer is yes. Here is why:
We understand from Vostok ice core data that there is a ~600 year lag in CO2 after temperature. The temperature cycle here is perhaps 1500 years. I have not independently analyzed any of this data.
The work you and I have done shows a ~9 month lag in CO2 after temperature. The peak-to-peak cycle length is ~3 years, in my opinion.
Are there one or more intermediate time cycles where CO2 lags temperature? Ernst Beck has complied tens of thousands of analyses of early measurements of atmospheric CO2, and concludes that CO2 levels were much higher during the 1930’s warm period than the generally-accepted levels; CO2 dropped sharply during the cooling from ~1946 to ~1977; and CO2 increased since 1977 due to the recent warming, and is now at similar levels to the early 1940’s. Beck has suffered scorn from both sides of the climate debate, but this does not negate his thousands of data points, or prove him wrong. Time and honest data will tell the story…
Beck believes the delay in this intermediate cycle is ~5 years. The cycle length is probably ~60-80 years.
If Beck is right then there are at least three cycles – “a wheel within a wheel within a wheel”.
The next question is will the current global cooling cause a decline in atmospheric CO2, or is the humanmade component of CO2 sufficiently large to overcome the natural variation which is apparently driven by temperature?
If you want to pursue this further, I suggest you examine the CO2 records from various sites. The range of seasonal CO2 variation is ~16ppm at Barrow Alaska versus ~1ppm at the South Pole, versus an average annual increase in global CO2 of ~1.5ppm. The Northern Hemisphere seasons are clearly dominant in CO2 variations. The variation in “peak and valley” months at different locations is interesting.
These scientific questions are truly fascinating.
However the more important question is will the current cooling be mild or severe, as some researchers fear. It would be truly ironic if our society continued to obsess about global warming, only to face a deep freeze.
Best regards for the Holidays!
Allan
Barrow CO2
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/in-situ/brw/brw_01C0_mm.co2
Mauna Loa CO2
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/in-situ/mlo/mlo_01C0_mm.co2
South Pole CO2
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/in-situ/spo/spo_01C0_mm.co2
__________________________________________
> the IPCC Bible says we understand all the climate…
You must have been reading the Apocrypha. The Authorised Version (aka AR4 WGI; http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/tssts-1.html) says:
“In the six years since the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (TAR), significant progress has been made in understanding past and recent climate change and in projecting future changes. These advances have arisen from large amounts of new data, more sophisticated analyses of data, improvements in the understanding and simulation of physical processes in climate models and more extensive exploration of uncertainty ranges in model results. The increased confidence in climate science provided by these developments is evident in this Working Group I contribution to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report.
While this report provides new and important policy-relevant information on the scientific understanding of climate change, the complexity of the climate system and the multiple interactions that determine its behaviour impose limitations on our ability to understand fully the future course of Earth’s global climate. There is still an incomplete physical understanding of many components of the climate system and their role in climate change. Key uncertainties include aspects of the roles played by clouds, the cryosphere, the oceans, land use and couplings between climate and biogeochemical cycles. The areas of science covered in this report continue to undergo rapid progress and it should be recognised that the present assessment reflects scientific understanding based on the peer-reviewed literature available in mid-2006.”
Notice how cunningly they hid “There is still an incomplete physical understanding of many components of the climate system” in plain sight?
The Sun riseth and the Sun falls. The only problem is that the Sun stays where it is (almost) It is the Earth that is moving.
It took many thousands of years for Scientists and the worlds population to realise that the Earth was not the center of the Universe. Watermelons were trying to take over the world then. Not much has changed.
Watermelons claim the Sun and Cloud has no effect.
How many of you have spent a night out in a desert.
On a clear Summers Day. 0 Deg C at Dawn and 50 Deg C at 2 pm.
Add a bit of Cloud. 20 Deg C at Dawn and 30 Deg at 2 pm.
Must be CO2 that is the culprit. Lets introduce a Carbon Tax. That will stop Global Warming.
Oh!! It has worked. Just talking about a Carbon Tax has caused world temps to fall. “Hail to Julia”
Now out in the Desert it is just :-
“On a clear Summers Day. 0 Deg C at Dawn and 50 Deg C at 2 pm.
Add a bit of Cloud. 20 Deg C at Dawn and 30 Deg at 2 pm.”
It has just cost every Man,Women and Child $1000 each.Where has the money gone? Maybe to Greece. Or maybe Germany to help them re-commission their shut down Nuclear Reactors so the people can turn their Heaters on again. Watermelons RULE.
Just a comment.
Who ever designed this plant did a bloody good job.
Ocean temps limited to 30 deg C.
Life is in abundance. Watermelons trying to take over the world!
Ever seen a Watermelon dropped from a 1st floor window onto concrete!
Sorry – Planet
This has nothing to do with the “climate”. As IPCC WG-3 Co-Chair Ottmar Edenhofer makes abundantly clear:
“One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”
The entire ‘runaway global warming’ scare is based entirely on the forced redistribution of the West’s wealth. Totalitrian wannabes like Connolley salivate at the prospect of digging their theiving hands into the pockets of the West’s taxpayers.
Some day there will be a reckoning.
So to explain the El NIno of 1998 Solar Cycle 22 would have to have been short with a peak around 1989. Hmmmm?
wiliam:
hideing things in plain site is indeed a skill….
Not exactly highlighted as a major precautionary note inthe Summary for Policymakers was it?
I was reminded of this statement from the Soldheim et al paper:
“For Svalbard a temperature decline of 3.5◦C is forecasted in solar cycle 24 for the yearly average temperature. An even higher temperature drop is forecasted in the winter months”
…when I saw this from the weather station at Svalbard:
“Last 30 days: Average temperature was -2.4 °C, 13.4 °C above the normal. Highest temperature was 7.0 °C (08 February), and the lowest was -15.0 °C (25 January).
Surely next year the great cooling will start? Because right now Soldheim et al are off by quite a margin.
PaulC says
Or maybe Germany to help them re-commission their shut down Nuclear Reactors
henry@paul
I hope they don’t do that.
Not a good idea, nuclear energy.
it is because they don’t know what to do with the rubbish (mainly)
(do you remember that debate that everyone forgot?)
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/nuclear-energy-not-save-and-sound
The biggest effect on a greenhouse is not how its built, but solar inputs. We are at least on the trail of the real culprit, variations in the TSI. This correlation is interesting and tied to variations in the TSI. If we will just keep digging on this spot (ha ha) we will eventually learn something.
In answer to the question in the title…No. These studies do not confirm the upcoming global cooling. Measurements either confirm or falsify this hypothesis. Only verifiable data will confirm the existence of either global warming or cooling.
William M. Connolley says:
February 13, 2012 at 4:24 am
Notice how cunningly they hid “There is still an incomplete physical understanding of many components of the climate system” in plain sight?
Ya a middle sentence in the second paragraph. It was not lead sentence nor a section title so it in fact was hidden. Stated but hidden.
There is a decidedly bad smell in here, now that the noted propagandist and socialist lickspittle “William M Connelly” has deigned to grace us with his malodorous presence. It would be fun though to see a few of his remarks arbitrarily snipped for no reason other than to enrage him or make his arguments look silly. But that would be reducing ourselves to his level of discourse wouldn’t it? This should be fun to watch.
William M. Connolley says:
February 13, 2012 at 2:00 am
I can still find it by searching for |Hathaway Cycle 24 Prediction|.
Are you (or denorris) going to update it with his current prediction?
Prof . William Gray proposed a 5-10 year lag between the MOC [MERIDIONALOVERTURNING CIRCULATION becoming stronger and global cooling . I recently noted that the Met Office uses a e-folding time of 4 years to account for solar effcts in their latest interannual predictions . I like the authors Jan -Erik Solheim et al noted above found little evidence that the solar effect and global temperature chnages happened in the same cycle . So I welcome their new approach. No where was this more evident than the period 1956-1960 when we had the highest sunspot numbers solar cycle but there was no significant global temperature rise . I would be the first to admit that my hypothesis may have some errors . It is but a brief analysis together with some personal comments . We all feel that the sun is the main climate driver but there is a lack of scientific papers to explain the exact mechanism of how this happens . I welcome the idea of more focus on this topic because the entire Co2 issue has gotten us all off the track and we now see global temperatures decling while Co2 contiunes to go up totally opposite to the predictions . Evidence of cooling is now clear even in Europe and Asia where the winter temperatures were supposed to go up and they have now had 3- 4 record cold winters in a row. There are even some recent studies that suggest that winters in Northern Europe and ASIA have been cooling for several decades . I have found that they have been decling since 1998 like in North America.
> going to update it with his current prediction?
Not sure what you mean. I’ve already updated the page text with the revised prediction(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Solar_cycle_24&diff=476621223&oldid=476386997) though I don’t have much faith in it. You’ll notice that the current (unsmoothed) value is already higher than the predicted-for-2013 peak value.
The page isn’t even semi-protected. You or anyone else can update it.
TrueNorthist>
Come on Shaw-y
El Nino episodes occur due to cooling, from stratospheric volcano events, and from a fall in solar activity, that`s why there are more El Nino episodes through eg. Maunder, Dalton and the 1880`s. The effect is real time, with little lag, and is due to falling and lower SOLAR WIND SPEEDS, not higher irradience. Land temperatures and the polar oscillators have a direct response to the solar wind speed (higher speed streams will give rise to heatwaves, and a more positive AO) so are typically moving in the opposite direction to ENSO.
John A says 12:51
I quit reading the article when I read about the warm water going down. I just cannot see that happening either.
This is just an awful, awful post. It should have never seen the light of day. Even as an 8th grade science report, I would have marked it up with so much red ink you could not have seen the black ink. Maybe it needs to be done. I don’t think the author realizes how poorly it was thought out and penned. Finally, I think this post is a grave embarrassment for it to appear at WUWT.
Smokey says:
February 13, 2012 at 3:33 am
Tell us how you really feel, Smokey.
BTW: I’m surprised Connolley is still allowed to use Wikipedia, much less edit it.